Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids

The first novel by Japan's most celebrated living writer, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of fifteen teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime.When plague breaks out, their host abandon them and flee. However, the boys's brief, doomed attempt to build autonomous lives of self-respect, love and tribal valour inevitably fail in the reflux of death and the adult nightmare of war.